NIGERIAN President Muhammadu Buhari’s focus on combining a military offensive with the fight against poverty and corruption is
the right approach in the battle against the Islamist militant group, Boko
Haram, a senior U.S. defense official said.

“They understand military pressure by itself will
not tackle the overall problem and understand the need for a truly integrated
approach,” U.S.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs
Amanda J. Dory said in an interview at the Pentagon in Washington. “This is
something the previous Nigerian government said, and had strategy documents to
articulate such an approach, but they weren’t actually implementing.”

Buhari beat President Goodluck Jonathan in March elections
this year after a campaign in which he pledged to end the threat of the
insurgents who are trying to carve out an Islamic state in Africa’s biggest
economy. He also promised to fight graft and narrow the gap between rich and
poor.

The violence, mainly centred in Boko Haram’s
stronghold of northeastern Nigeria, has killed thousands of civilians and
displaced more than a million since 2009, stunting economic development in one
of the country’s poorest regions and forcing schools and markets to close. The
insurgency captured international attention in April 2014 when the militants
kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls in the town of Chibok, sparking a social
media campaign known as #BringBackOurGirls for their return home. Most remain
missing.

U.S. military

The U.S. announced last month it’s sending as many
as 300 non-combat troops to neighbouring Cameroon to bolster a regional force
that’s fighting Boko Haram, including its intelligence- gathering activities.

Almost six months into his term, Buhari has
relocated the army’s headquarters from Abuja to Maiduguri, the epicenter of the
insurgency, replaced his top military chiefs and vowed to recover billions of
dollars stolen in corruption scandals. Still, his plan to bring change risks
being undermined by an economic slump from the low price of oil, the country’s
main revenue earner.

“The application of military pressure does not
address any of the so-called underlying grievances in an enduring way,” said
Dory, who has met Buhari twice since he took office in May. The president
visited Washington in July and she was in Nigeria last month.

Multinational force

The conflict has spilled across the borders,
spurring neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and Niger to join a multinational force to
battle the militants. The coalition has helped dislodge rebels from some of
their positions, although bombings in towns and cities continue.

While Boko Haram has pledged allegiance to Islamic
State, which rules a self-declared caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq, the
U.S. views it as a predominately symbolic gesture, and there’s “limited
evidence” to suggest they are actively cooperating, Dory said.

“This type of marriage of convenience is emerging
in different contexts, but various strands of extremist organisations in Africa aren’t gathering into any type of
coherent mass that is operating for the same purpose,” she said.

Tracking Kony

In central Africa,
the U.S. in October extended for another year a mission that began in 2011 to
help fight against the renegade Lord’s Resistance Army and its leader Joseph
Kony. As the group has lost support and is down to about 150 fighters, from as
many as 1,000 a few years ago, it’s been able to finance itself through the
illegal wildlife trade, in a worrying new trend contributing to the slaughter
of elephants, said Dory.

The LRA was founded in the 1980s by Ugandan Kony, a
former altar boy who says the group is inspired by Christianity’s 10
commandments and is now wanted by The Hague-based International Criminal Court
on war crimes. After being pushed out of Uganda a decade ago, the group, which
is accused of mutilation and turning children into sex slaves, is mainly active
in Central African Republic, South Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo.

“I think we are closer collectively than we’ve ever
been” to finding Kony, said Dory. “The numbers have decreased, the impact on
the civilian population has decreased, the geographic reach of the LRA has
decreased tremendously.”